"In Emily Brontë's 1847 novel Wuthering Heights, the moors of Yorkshire are wet with rain, fog-and symbolism. The rugged landscape separating the titular home from the neighboring estate, Thrushcross Grange, represents danger and harshness, but also a kind of wild freedom for the star-crossed lovers Catherine and Heathcliff, who explore the land together in childhood and spend their adult lives yearning for each other."
"In Emerald Fennell's 2026 film "Wuthering Heights", the walls are literally dripping with moisture of all kinds. Every frame onscreen, every room erected at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, near London, is over-the-top, filled with surrealist nods to the themes at hand (and also, literally so many hands!). These bold design choices are imbued with meaning-nothing about Fennell's take is subtle."
""We were aiming for an accuracy of feeling rather than period accuracy," explains Davies. "All the design and the vision of it had to be felt before it was understood. We were playing into every sensation. We often spoke about how it'd be great if we could have smell-o-vision. It'd be lovely to give the audience bits of the walls that you can touch.""
The film reimagines Wuthering Heights as a sensory onslaught, saturating sets with moisture, tactile details, and surreal motifs to translate moorland symbolism into visual and physical elements. Production design at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden emphasizes feeling over strict Georgian accuracy, prioritizing atmosphere through exaggerated textures, props, and repeated motifs such as hands. Suzie Davies and set decorator Charlotte Dirickx collaborated to craft immersive environments and pursued sensory ambitions including a joking desire for "smell-o-vision" and touchable walls. Bold, unsubtle choices are deliberately meaningful. Early audience reactions on social platforms include criticism of casting choices ahead of the film's February 13 release.
Read at Architectural Digest
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